Sunday, May 8, 2016
Ursula K. Le Guin, quotes on freedom and imagination
"The last words of the Mahabharata are, “By no means can I attain a goal beyond my reach.” It is likely that justice, a human idea, is a goal beyond human reach. We’re good at inventing things that can’t exist.
Maybe freedom cannot be attained through human institutions but must remain a quality of the mind or spirit not dependent on circumstances, a gift of grace… My problem with it is that its devaluation of work and circumstance encourages institutional injustices which make the gift of grace inaccessible. A two-year-old child who dies of starvation or a beating or a firebombing has not been granted access to freedom, nor any gift of grace, in any sense in which I can understand the words. We can attain by our own efforts only an imperfect justice, a limited freedom. Better than none. Let us hold fast to that principle, the love of Freedom, of which the freed slave, the poet, spoke."
"The shift from denial of injustice to recognition of injustice can’t be unmade. What your eyes have seen they have seen. Once you see the injustice, you can never again in good faith deny the oppression and defend the oppressor. What was loyalty is now betrayal. From now on, if you don’t resist, you collude. But there is a middle ground between defense and attack, a ground of flexible resistance, a space opened for change. It is not an easy place to find or live in."
"The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.
[…]
We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable."
the unfolding
i wish i could remember
when i was butterfly ,
unfolded my wings
first time
came out of
my cocoon
where i was growing,
changing in sleep
i wish i could remember
these dreams
and even
i still feel this time
I wish i could remember
how i was a caterpillar,
all intention
fixed on ingestion
i wish i could remember
how i knew magic
and the time
to go into my prison,
all i know now
is that i was
always vulnerable
in all stages
all i know now,
wisdom is life itself,
joy of transience
unfolding
when i was butterfly ,
unfolded my wings
first time
came out of
my cocoon
where i was growing,
changing in sleep
i wish i could remember
these dreams
and even
i still feel this time
I wish i could remember
how i was a caterpillar,
all intention
fixed on ingestion
i wish i could remember
how i knew magic
and the time
to go into my prison,
all i know now
is that i was
always vulnerable
in all stages
all i know now,
wisdom is life itself,
joy of transience
unfolding
Jeff Buckley - Lilac Wine
erring.maybe getting lost...in a maze...that appears to be all at times, Jeff Buckley...
Martha Nussbaum, quotes, on anger and forgiveness
"Trust … is different from mere reliance. One may rely on an alarm clock, and to that extent be disappointed if it fails to do its job, but one does not feel deeply vulnerable, or profoundly invaded by the failure. Similarly, one may rely on a dishonest colleague to continue lying and cheating, but this is reason, precisely, not to trust that person; instead, one will try to protect oneself from damage. Trust, by contrast, involves opening oneself to the possibility of betrayal, hence to a very deep form of harm. It means relaxing the self-protective strategies with which we usually go through life, attaching great importance to actions by the other over which one has little control. It means, then, living with a certain degree of helplessness.
Is trust a matter of belief or emotion? Both, in complexly related ways. Trusting someone, one believes that she will keep her commitments, and at the same time one appraises those commitments as very important for one’s own flourishing. But that latter appraisal is a key constituent part of a number of emotions, including hope, fear, and, if things go wrong, deep grief and loss. Trust is probably not identical to those emotions, but under normal circumstances of life it often proves sufficient for them. One also typically has other related emotions toward a person whom one trusts, such as love and concern. Although one typically does not decide to trust in a deliberate way, the willingness to be in someone else’s hands is a kind of choice, since one can certainly live without that type of dependency… Living with trust involves profound vulnerability and some helplessness, which may easily be deflected into anger."
"Being heard and acknowledged is a reasonable wish on the part of the wronged party, and asking for truth and understanding is not the same thing as asking for payback. Indeed, it often helps the Transition. However, often the extraction of acknowledgment shades over unpleasantly into payback and even humiliation, and this temptation should be avoided."
"Intimate relationships are perilous because of the exposure and lack of control they involve. Being seriously wronged is a constant possibility, and anger, therefore, a constant and profoundly human temptation. If vulnerability is a necessary consequence of giving love its proper value, then grief is often right and valuable. It does not follow, however, that anger is so."
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/03/martha-nussbaum-anger-and-forgiveness/?mc_cid=cfcc87c790&mc_eid=d4633eff0a
...well..well written...i am in a position where i might conclude this is all in fact too dangerous for me,
a long time...
Martha Nussbaum writes on status seeking.
Here I am not seeking status but a home felt, not a house built and fixed, neither in place nor mind, but trust, care, warmth and love.
Arms open to welcome me with joy whenever joy can be present.
Without too many re-occuring thoughts on anger, hurt, mistrust and bad past from both sides.
Without being defined and mirrored to be and behave such and such,
without being pre-cut and pre-defined in my role and context and flowing out and towards.
I accept it happening but not as a preliminary context, being warned off again and again , burdened with an unfortunate but real threat towards me
as a living physical being in my very connection to the roots of life.
I was told quite often that i am "traditional" and "romantic".
But..I am just alive and totally unwilling for a sometimes nearly constructed relationship
appearing again and again based on de-construction of expectancy
and disturbed by passionate opposition to words, values, ideas,
a relationship for periods more analyzed and feared than lived.
Therefore I don't know if love can be in my life now. I found, lost, found...for many months, presence, joy, love, suffering, life. I met death too. i met myself. as always-
not so pleasant, it is for nobody.
my trust is minimal by now, and hope has reached a low level.
and i do behave badly, manage badly, meet too much insecurity, my own
and the kind inherent in relationship , also obstruction and anger in it
where i want peace but cannot keep it.
i don't wish to expect anything at all anymore. But this makes me ...sad.
Sad and free.
I am willing to be surprised. That is all. Maybe i can do the same. How should i know.
Life and love are astonishing BECAUSE they cannot be defined.
The always imminent loss of life and of love gives them their meaning, maybe.
I'd be happy if i could just give...and keep giving out of heart.
this way, coming across Passo d.M.Croce di C.
and down...:
..on way home in a motorclub rental car,
motorbike in Brixen. i had stoppped for
a foto, then it didn't start anymore..:
from Arraba via Passo di Falzarego, Cortina d'Ampezzo to Passo Tre Croci , Auronzo, Passo S. Antonio to Passo di M.Croce di C.
Arabba, Hotel Olympia: recommended!!!
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